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Gammy case shines a light on Thailand's booming surrogacy industry

MARK COLVIN: There are conflicting reports this afternoon over a baby with Down's syndrome, allegedly abandoned by its Australian parents in Thailand after being born to a surrogate mother.

The baby boy is currently in hospital and his surrogate mother has told journalists that his Australian parents abandoned him when they took his twin sister home, but left him behind.

An online campaign to raise funds for the baby has raised more than $200,000, but there is some confusion as to who's behind that campaign.

Our South East Asia correspondent Samantha Hawley has been investigating the story and joins me now.

Sam, first of all, what do you know about this baby, its parentage, and the confusion and conflicting reports around it?

SAMANTHA HAWLEY: Well, what we do know is that this mother, this surrogate mother, gave birth to twins in December last year. We know that to be true.

We know that there was a girl and we know that there was a boy, and from her account, she says that at four months, when she was four months pregnant, it was established that the boy had Down's syndrome.

She says she wasn't told about that until she was seven months pregnant, at which point the parents from Western Australia asked her to abort both babies.

She said she could not do that, because of Thai culture and her religious beliefs.

She then said they came up with a plan that the parents from Western Australia would take the girl home, and they would leave the boy, and they had arranged to have that boy placed into an institution.

But she, this is the surrogate mother, said that she wasn't comfortable with that.

In an extended interview on 7:30 tonight, she says that if that had happened, the boy would receive no love at all, and so she chose then to keep the boy.

Now that's her account of what happened.

MARK COLVIN: And as we know, the family here are disputing that account, to the extent that they say that they didn't know anything about the boy. So obviously difficult to disentangle that particular story.

But you have been investigating this whole surrogacy industry there. What have you discovered?

SAMANTHA HAWLEY: Well, I've discovered a largely unregulated industry. I've discovered that there's been a 500 per cent increase in the number of Australians that are coming here to undertake IVF or use surrogates in the last year, so a huge increase.

Now, that's partly due to the fact that there was a crack-down on the industry in India.

So there was one area, or country I guess, where you could go to use surrogates, that was really clamped down on and it led to a great increase here.

We've also had a look at some other cases. For instance, gender selection here was still allowed until very recently, in recent weeks.

So we've followed an Australian woman who came here largely because she wanted to gender select. She wanted to have a baby girl and not a baby boy.

We also caught up with an Australian gay couple who have successfully had a baby girl, and they've gone home now with that baby girl.

Now everything they did was a sort of best practice, but there are many things within the industry here that most certainly are not.

MARK COLVIN: Can I just take you back to the gender selection. Did that involve aborting children not of the desired gender?

SAMANTHA HAWLEY: No it didn't, it involved choosing fertilised embryos that were female, and discarding of embryos, fertilised embryos, that were not.

MARK COLVIN: And you say that that was legal, and has now been made illegal?

SAMANTHA HAWLEY: Well that's right, but I think the law in Thailand was rather hazy, if I can put it that way. I think people were taking advantage of the fact that the law wasn't very clear.

But the ruling military now has been cracking down in all sorts of areas, Mark, across the board really. But this is one of them. They really do see it as a sort of moral disgrace for the country, and they've now said that any surrogacy into the future must be between a husband and a wife, and a relative, as it is in Australia, and also that gender selecting is against the law.

MARK COLVIN: And there have been reports of unwanted fertilised eggs sold on the black market?

SAMANTHA HAWLEY: Yes that's right. There are reports that some people sell eggs on to get a discounted rate when they're having their IVF treatment.

So there's this sort of horrifying story that we've been hearing of in recent days, about the Down's syndrome boy.

But there's many other sort of quite disturbing stories within the IVF surrogacy industry in Thailand, including that people do sell their eggs on the black market.

MARK COLVIN: And, as you said, you'll be reporting more on this on 7:30 tonight.

But just one last question, which is, if this has been such a big industry, why do you think it's gone unreported, largely, until now?

SAMANTHA HAWLEY: I think sometimes it does take a case like this to really highlight an industry that has gone unnoticed.

I suppose it takes a bit of devastating news, like this, to bring it to light.

So, up until now, of course, there's been big money to be made in this country, big money changing hands between surrogacy agencies, doctors, fertility clinics, and then small money actually, Mark, going to the surrogate.

But I think cases like this, and cases in the media like this, really shine a spotlight on an industry that perhaps isn't working quite as planned.

MARK COLVIN: Thanks Sam. Samantha Hawley is our South East Asia correspondent, and she has been investigating that story.